Northside’s got itself a new arcade-bar. Arcade Legacy: Bar Edition is home to an expertly curated selection of retro video games, beers, cocktails and gourmet hot dogs.
The arcade-bar is the second location operated by Arcade Legacy, whose home base has been inside the Forest Fair Village for three and a half years.
“We had no idea how it would do,” says owner Jesse Baker. “There were nearly no arcades in the U.S. when we opened up, but business has been good enough for the last three years for me to open a bar.”
Arcade Legacy: Bar Edition has more than 40 arcade games at the moment and it is anticipating 50 by the end of this month. The games are free to play for of-age bar patrons, and they eventually plan on allowing younger customers to game during select hours.
Only two weeks after the arcade-bar opened for business, a 92-year-old driver crashed his car through the south wall facing Cooper Street. There were no injuries, no arcade cabinets were damaged and the building was not structurally compromised.
“If you strike us down, we shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine,” says the arcade-bar’s manager, Christopher Flint, paraphrasing Obi-Wan Kenobi from 1977’s Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. “I imagine because of the historical preservation of the building, it will take a little longer than any regular new construction, but it hasn’t slowed up business.”
While the arcade-bar was forced to close the day of the accident, it was back in business the following day with a temporary wall. They even offer a new drink to celebrate the accident: a modified Irish Car Bomb now being called the Cooper Street Car Crash.
“It’s a blessing in disguise to have nobody get hurt and no structural damage to the building. It allows us to build a bigger door,” Flint says, sitting at a tabletop Tempest cabinet that was pushed back by the crash but was not noticeably damaged. “Some of these games are huge, and with our skinny door a lot of these games barely fit through. Sinistar — the sit-down version — and this Tempest table needed to be turned on their sides to get in, and these are already awkward 300-pound antiques. The fact that we’re going to be able to fit more games in here will be awesome.”
The arcade-bar also plans on opening a patio area by early October, allowing the business to accommodate musical acts and outdoor monster-movie screenings, while also setting up the bar to be more dog-friendly.
“We’re trying to make it fun to go out again and not be so status quo,” Flint says. “The games are the attraction. We’re trying to replicate an arcade you’d see in 1989. Most of the games here are classics, a lot of first-wave and second-wave.”
The custom hot dogs — and housemade mac and cheese and biercheese — are an added bonus. All-beef or vegan “haute dogs” ($6-$8) are served with signature toppings ranging from goetta and real maple syrup to “napa kimchi” from locals The Pickled Pig, all served on a Giminetti’s bun. “We have sourced as many of our ingredients and items locally whenever possible,” Flint says. “Lifting up the local community and supporting neighborhoods and businesses within our city is and has always been part of the plan.”
While it’s impossible to discuss arcade-bars without bringing up OTR’s 16-Bit Bar+Arcade, there are differences between the two.
“At 16-Bit, they openly say they are a bar first and an arcade second, which is probably a better business model,” Baker says. “We’re an arcade first, but we make our money on the drinks and food…People just love the feeling of playing old games.”
New to the arcade-bar scene? CityBeat has you covered. Read about arcade etiquette here.
ARCADE LEGACY: BAR EDITION is located at 3929 Spring Grove Ave. in Northside. More info: arcadelegacyohio.com.
This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2015.
